Popsmacked! Jennifer Lawrence ascends to Hollywood’s A-list

Jennifer Lawrence

There’s a scene in Silver Linings Playbook destined to go down in Hollywood history not because it’s so great — although its wonky indie rhythms do weave an endearing spell — but because after two years of buildup, it marks the exact moment where Jennifer Lawrence becomes that rarest of Hollywood entities: a movie star.

You’ll notice I didn’t say “box office star,” because the 22-year-old maverick achieved that landmark earlier this year in dystopian blockbuster The Hunger Games, where she starred as a feisty rebel who defies authority in a teenage killing field.

And I didn’t say “critical darling”, because that milestone was passed when she scored a 2010 Oscar nom for her role as a ferociously uncompromising teenager in the bleak survival drama Winter’s Bone. On Thursday, with an Oscar nod sure to follow, she landed a Golden Globe acting nom for Silver Linings Playbook.

Movie star, however, is a tougher plateau, demanding a perfect storm of disparate elements that rarely come together.

But Playbook — an indie romance about two offbeat loners with mental health issues — delivers that penultimate moment in a scene that sees the passionately forceful Kentucky native holding her own against the Grand Old Man of method acting, Robert De Niro, without breaking a sweat.

“I didn’t drop off your son, because he wasn’t with me!” her straight-shooting divorcee implodes when De Niro’s obsessive sports freak blames her for a mishap of his own making. “Read the signs!”

Her tirade — or is it a statement of purpose? — goes on for several minutes, awesome in its assurance, jarring in its intensity.

And without giving away key plot points, here’s why it will be remembered decades from now as the moment this ambitious up-and-comer vaulted past the generic celebrity holding pen and became a full-fledged superstar:

• It establishes her, at 22, as a feisty force of nature in the same way Silkwood established Cher, Taxi Driver established Jodie Foster and Cape Fear established Juliette Lewis. She generates so much electricity she singes the screen.

• She dominates the proceedings without artifice or hammy overacting.

• She does this effortlessly.

• You can’t take your eyes off her, prompting the stunned inquiries, “Who is she? Where did she come from?”

“Lawrence is that rare young actress who plays, who is, grown-up,’’ wrote Time Magazine’s Richard Corliss. “Sullen and sultry, she lends a mature intelligence to any role.’’

Agreed Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers. “She’s some kind of miracle: rude, dirty, funny, foulmouthed, sloppy, sexy, vibrant and vulnerable, sometimes all in the same scene, even in the same breath.”

She is, to be sure, part of a new generation of Hollywood upstarts — mostly female — who embody an authenticity that belies their age, appearance and supposed life experience.

Ellen Page in Juno, Natalie Portman in Closer, Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation, Rooney Mara in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

In an era reputed to be a breeding ground for shallow, self-entitled helicopter kids who grew up with no discernible talent and an unquenchable thirst for fame, a new front of female actors has grown beyond tedious ingénue roles to establish themselves as maverick outposts on a bold new movie frontier.

And Lawrence goes one further, juggling the art house fare that gives her bankable street cred with a populist following that will, if she follows her instincts, ensure her longevity.

“It was really strange,’’ she told Britain’s The Telegraph in March. “Because one minute nobody knows who you are — I was just this girl in indie movies. And then all of a sudden all these people who used to ignore me at parties were sucking up to me.’’

No surprise here. The Hunger Games did bigger box office than any of the Twilight films (which were massive), turned Lawrence into the highest grossing action heroine in history, and sits at No. 13 on the all-time North American box office list.

It also has three instalments to follow, which ensures its star will, at the very least, be around longer than Ellen Page, the Next Big Thing of 2007, who scored an Oscar-nomination for Juno, garnered critical accolades up the wazoo and then, despite a small role in 2010’s Inception, quietly disappeared.

It’s not uncommon. Get too famous too quickly, and the critics disown you. Do too many indie films without turning a profit, and you’re considered box office poison.

The key to survival: finding that magical balance between art and accessibility without falling on your face.

Mind you, in a business where egos are stroked out of proportion (Lawrence was just named the World’s Most Desirable Woman by askmen.com) and missteps telegraphed with venal derision, that’s no easy feat.

“It’s exciting for about five minutes — like walking through a restaurant and hearing people say your name to each other,’’ she told Entertainment Weekly with the mix of no-nonsense candour and stoic self-awareness that marked her best performances.

“After a while it starts to get creepy and scary and you feel cynical.

“I always imagined I would stay the exact same and I would be just as happy. And I’m not. It’s not that I’m ungrateful at all. Or unhappy. It’s just that people are different and it creeps me out.’’

It’s part of the turf, this Hollywood ennui that puts a choke-hold on artistic innovation.

But if she can channel her disgust with the same scrappy determination that has defined her career, this unassuming newcomer dubbed “The Most Talented Young Actress in America” may well secure her A-list ranking for decades to come.